The Second Floor Thanos Kalamidas V y r o n a s C h r o n i C l e s “Your grandfather would have cried to see this. Cried! Do you hear me?” He nodded. He could almost see the old man’s eyes, dark, sharp, unbending. The Second Floor Thanos Kalamidas Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C The Second Floor The Second Floor Thanos Kalamidas Vyronas Chronicles Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C The Second Floor T he afternoon light in Vyronas has a pecu- liar colour, a pale gold that makes the nar- row streets seem older than they are. it is the kind of light that reveals, not hides; it turns dust into memory. yiannis stood before the small yellowed house, hands in his pockets, staring up at the new second floor. The concrete still smelled wet, raw, unfinished. The builders’ laughter had faded, leaving behind only the low hum of cicadas and the echo of his own thoughts. From the open window of the neigh- bouring house, an old voice called out: “yianni! you’ll make the whole street jealous now!” it was Kyria Despina, his mother’s cousin, hair like tan- gled silver threads, leaning on the railing of her balcony. Thanos Kalamidas he smiled faintly. “There’s nothing to be jeal- ous of, Theia. Just more stairs to climb.” “stairs!” she scoffed. “your grandfather would have cried to see this. Cried! Do you hear me?” he nodded. he could almost see the old man’s eyes, dark, sharp, unbending. But he said nothing. * * * * * * * * * * inside, the house smelled of ironed fabric and lemon polish. on the wooden table, three genera- tions’ worth of hands had left their faint imprints, his grandfather’s calloused from exile, his father’s rough from factory work, and his own, lined with needle marks. his mother, Maria, sat near the window with a plate of olives and bread before her, though she wasn’t eat- ing. her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, where the new cement joined the old plaster in a crude seam. “so it’s done,” she said. her tone carried no tri- umph, only fatigue. “a house with two floors. your papou’s dream.” yiannis pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “he wanted it for all of us.” The Second Floor she snorted. “For all of us? he wanted it so the neighbours would stop whispering that refugees lived in shacks. That’s all he ever cared about, pride.” yiannis didn’t answer. he poured himself a glass of water, the sound loud in the quiet room. Maria continued, voice softer now: “you know, when we came back from the funeral, he made me promise. ‘one day,’ he said, ‘you’ll see the sea from our roof.’ he never said ‘if.’ always ‘when.’ like the world owed him that much.” yiannis smiled faintly. “Maybe it did.” she looked at him sharply. “you think building this makes up for everything? For the years your father worked himself into the ground? For the debts?” he shook his head slowly. “no. But it gives them a place to rest.” * * * * * * * * * * That evening, his sister eleni came by, her perfume clashing with the scent of wet cement. she was always in a hurry, her voice like a string pulled too tight. “i can’t believe you actually did it,” she said, circling Thanos Kalamidas the room. “a second floor! yianni, you’ll never stop. you’ll die in this house with your sewing machine.” he laughed softly. “and where should i die, eleni? in some rented flat with strangers above me?” she rolled her eyes. “you could have moved to a bigger place instead of building on this relic. every- one else has.” “everyone else,” he said quietly, “doesn’t owe a promise.” her tone softened. “still clinging to Papou’s ghost, eh?” he looked up at her then, and for a moment she saw something that silenced her teasing, a mixture of sor- row and stubbornness that had always frightened her. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe he’s the only one who ever believed we’d stay.” eleni sighed, looking around the dim room, the patched curtains, the cracked tiles, the sing- er machine in the corner like a relic of devotion. “you could sell it, you know. The machine. They buy antiques now. it’s all fashion.” The Second Floor yiannis’s hand moved instinctively to the old iron wheel. “it’s not for sale.” * * * * * * * * * * When they left, his mother upstairs preparing for sleep, eleni gone to her husband’s car, yiannis remained alone. The neighbourhood had quieted, though from somewhere came the faint sound of a radio, the voice of a singer stretching through the warm air like a thread pulled too far. he climbed the unfinished stairs to the new floor. The wind met him there, cool, unexpected. From here, Vyronas unfolded beneath him: a jumble of red roofs and satellite dishes, clotheslines fluttering like flags of persistence. in the distance, he could see the pale outline of hymettus, the same mountain his grandfather had seen when he arrived with the refugees in 1922, bare- foot, hungry, carrying only a bag of tools and a pho- tograph of a burned house in smyrna. yiannis could almost hear his grandfather’s voice, thick with the accent of another world: “here we start again, yianni mou. a wall, then a win- dow, then a floor. We build until the world remem- bers us.” Thanos Kalamidas he whispered into the dusk, as if in reply: “They remember now, Papou. i did it.” * * * * * * * * * * The wind shifted, carrying the scent of basil from the neighbour’s pots. somewhere, a gate creaked. and yet, even as he stood there, proud, fulfilled, trembling with something like peace, a flicker of un- ease passed through him. The second floor stood strong, but the foundations below were old, cracked, burdened with secrets he barely understood. in the silence, a memory surfaced, his father’s voice on the night before he died, rasping from the bed: “Don’t dig too deep, yianni. This house is built on promises and lies. let it stand.” yiannis closed his eyes. The cicadas had stopped. The light was fading fast, the shadows lengthening across the unfinished walls. he thought of his mother’s bitterness, his sister’s impatience, his father’s warning and his grandfa- ther’s relentless faith. somewhere among them all lay the truth of this house, the thread that bound them together and threatened to choke them if pulled too hard. The Second Floor he exhaled slowly. “one day,” he murmured, “i’ll learn which it is.” Then, from the street below, Kyria De- spina’s voice again, faint but sharp: “yianni! Come down! your mother’s calling! There’s something she wants to tell you, something about your grandfather!” yiannis froze. The word grandfather seemed to echo in the still air, threading through the generations like a stitch yet to be finished. he turned back toward the stairs, the fading light catching on his face, half pride, half dread and began to descend. Thanos Kalamidas I. The old clock on the wall had stopped again, its hands frozen at half past seven. The air downstairs was thick with the smell of boiled cabbage and de- tergent, the scent of years compressed into the same four rooms. yiannis hesitated at the bottom step, his mother’s voice drifting from the kitchen. “Close the door, yianni. The flies are coming in.” he obeyed, wiping his hands on his trousers. The tension in her tone was new, and it threaded through him like a pinprick. Maria sat at the table, her shoul- ders hunched, her hair tied back with a piece of twine. Before her was an envelope, yellowed and creased, sealed with tape browned by time. The Second Floor “sit,” she said without looking at him. he did. she turned the envelope over, tracing its edge with her finger. “your Theia Despina found this in the back of your grandfather’s sewing chest. she said it was meant for you, or maybe for your father. hard to tell now. she didn’t want to keep it.” yiannis reached for it, but she pulled it back slightly. “Before you open it, you should know, your grandfa- ther wasn’t the saint everyone says he was.” yiannis frowned. “he came here with nothing. he built all this.” Maria’s eyes flashed. “he built it, yes. But on what? you think these walls rose from faith alone? you think we had money for land, back then?” her voice cracked, sharp as a broken seam. “he made a deal, yianni. With someone who didn’t be- long here. someone who owned the ground under this house before we did.” yiannis blinked, confused. “What are you saying?” Maria pushed the envelope toward him at last. Thanos Kalamidas “read it. Then you’ll understand why your father hated him.” he tore the brittle paper carefully. inside was a folded letter, written in a trembling script that carried traces of an older world , part Greek, part Turkish. The ink had bled in places, but he could still make out the name, Kemal Aydın yiannis read aloud: “To Manolis Konstantinou, you have my word that this land will be yours, though it once belonged to my family. We left not by choice but by fire. you will build where our ol- ive tree once stood. Keep the soil alive. That is all i ask. — K.a.” The room fell silent. outside, a scooter passed, the sound fading quickly into the dusk. Maria spoke quietly. “he never told anyone where the money came from to buy this plot. not even me. he said he borrowed from a ‘friend across the sea.’ i thought it was a story. But now you see, it was a trade of guilt and mercy. Two men who lost everything, pretending the world could be rewritten.” The Second Floor yiannis folded the letter with trembling fingers. “so our home, this house ...it’s built on someone else’s loss.” Maria nodded. “We all are, yianni. every refugee family here stands on someone else’s ground.” she looked up at him then, her eyes dark but dry. “The question is what do we owe them still?” he didn’t answer. his throat felt tight. * * * * * * * * * * That night, sleep wouldn’t come. yiannis lay awake, the letter on the nightstand beside the small lamp, its edges curling inward like a wound. above him, the new second floor creaked softly as the cement cooled. he thought of the man named Kemal, faceless, vanished and of his grandfather’s fierce pride, the stubborn refusal ever to speak of the past in anything but victory. in the half-dark, a memory sur- faced, his grandfather at the old sewing ta- ble, leaning close, whispering in his ear: “never forget where we came from, yianni. But nev- er let it pull you back.” Thanos Kalamidas now he wondered if that had been warning or con- fession. * * * * * * * * * * Morning came slowly, with the sound of church bells rolling over the rooftops. The city was already stirring, vendors shouting, buses wheezing up the hill. yiannis went upstairs, barefoot, carrying the let- ter. he stood in the unfinished room, the light spread- ing across the unpainted walls. The air was cooler here. he unfolded the letter again, staring at the foreign name, and something inside him shifted, not guilt exactly, but a kind of restless curiosity, as if the house itself were whispering stories he hadn’t been allowed to hear. From below came the sound of his mother’s ra- dio, the newsreader’s voice monotone, then the faint melody of an old smyrnaiko song. The tune twisted through him, nostalgic and painful. yiannis thought of the promise his grandfather made, “one day, you’ll see the sea from our roof.” The Second Floor But now, standing on the threshold of that dream, he wondered whose sea it really was. he looked toward the horizon, toward the blue that shimmered faintly beyond the haze, and whispered: “Maybe it’s time to find out.” Thanos Kalamidas II. The next morning, yiannis closed the tailor shop early. The sun had barely risen above the hill when he walked toward the bus stop, letter folded carefully in his pocket. his mother had asked no questions, though she knew where he was going. she had only said, “if you stir the past, do it gently.” The road to the city center cut through neighbour- hoods that seemed stitched together like an old quilt, new apartment blocks beside the worn refugee hous- es of another era. as the bus rumbled past the old cemetery, yiannis saw the iron gate his grandfather had helped weld decades ago. For the first time, it felt like an entrance to something unfinished. The Second Floor at the library in the center of athens, he searched through municipal archives, brittle records, migra- tion lists, property deeds written in faded ink. after hours, he found the name, Kemal aydın, born 1898, resident of smyrna, deported 1923. no further re- cords. yiannis sat back. The librarian, an elderly man with nicotine-stained fingers, noticed his expression. “lost someone?” “Found someone, maybe.” The man nodded, understanding without asking more. * * * * * * * * * * Back in Vyronas, the wind carried the scent of rain. yiannis went up to the unfinished second floor, letter in hand, the hills darkening under the coming storm. he read the letter again, then again, until the words blurred. he thought of Kemal, a man driven from his home, who wrote to another exile and gave him the ground where his olive tree had stood. he imagined their meeting, two men on opposite sides of loss, both try- Thanos Kalamidas ing to turn ashes into soil. Perhaps it was not a busi- ness deal but an act of grace neither could explain. That night, as thunder rolled across the city, yian- nis dreamed he was sewing a suit from two kinds of cloth, one pale and fine, one rough and dark. The seams would not align. every time he pulled the thread, the fabric tore a little more. When he woke, he knew what he had to do. * * * * * * * * * * he spent the next week alone, working through the heat and noise. The upper floor began to take shape, whitewashed walls, a small window facing east. But at the center of the room, he left a square of bare concrete exposed. he mixed soil into it, a hand- ful he’d taken from the tiny refugee memorial near the church, and another handful from the patch of dry ground behind his house, where wild mint grew among the stones. it was his way of joining the two earths, the one his grandfather had claimed and the one that had been given up. When his mother came upstairs and saw what he’d done, she said quietly, “What is this, yianni?”